This new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling selected from a group of seedlings planted by me at Sandy, Oreg., with the object of producing lilies in shades of pink and peach, well suited to forcing for pot plant production out-of-season, a product heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
The planting from which the present seedling was selected was made from seeds derived from a hybrid developed by my crossing the clonal cultivar `Peachblush` (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 4,334) with a shorter pink seedling selected from the cross of `Prince Charming`.times.`Harmony` (both unpantented) and my new seedling was selected for propagation and test because of its unusual flowers, which have a deep pink, gold throated coloration and copious elongated spotting, a color pattern unique in this type of lily plant. Asexual reproduction of this selected seedling was done by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., with such pleasing results that, under my direction, successive generations produced by bulb scale propagation and by natural propagation from bulblets were grown and demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of my new variety would hold true from generation to generation under asexual propagation and appeared to be firmly fixed.
Work with this new plant has shown that the variety remains short and is not overly susceptible to bud abortion when forced into flower out-of-season as a pot plant; and in addition, the clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and disease resistance; the new plant also possesses the characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit and the clone is a vigorous and good grower and propagator as observed at Sandy, Oreg. The new plant has been found to be well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled. For example, October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon in an average of sixty-five to eighty days with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures.